OT FOAK especially bosses

A request for help:

As most of you may be aware. I'm due to start year 3 of my degree course
soon. I have to do a 10,000 word dissertation in the form of a research
project.

The topic is labour markets. More specifically the use of bogus
credentials/claims in job applications.

I'd like to hear from you if you recruit people and have experience of
people applying for jobs where:
the claims in their CV did not stand up at interview
credentials were falsified

If the person was hired:
how was he/she found out
what happened next? Technically it is a criminal offence.

The only published academic study that covered this topic was targetted
at "bogus doctors" and dates from 1996. The author found that:
most of those that were found out had credentials from foreign
institutions;
the GMC accepted the doctors onto the register without checking the
authenticity of the credentials;
hospitals/surgeries did not do any checks of their own;
colleagues covered up or made allowances for poor performance;
often, bogus drs were only found out after they had been investigated
for other misdemeanors e.g. insurance fraud

I'd like to widen the research to cover a cross section of the labour
market.

All information used will be confidential.

If you can help or have questions post here or email. I don't need any
information yet, just an expression of interest.

TIA

 

I can put you in touch with a couple of companies who do CV validation
services - let me know if you're interested - I am sure they'd have some
tales to tell!

--

jeremy
['75 RD250A ] | ['02 Fazer 600 in blue]
_______________________________________
jeremy at hireserve dot com

 

You don't need to worry about that until about a week before it's due
in. That's how long it took me. Bloke in my year did one in 26
hours.

I haven't been. Yet.

Only kidding.

Oh, the irony. And so topical that this be posted here.

Give me a shout when you need something, I'll be happy to help.
whateveryouwant at benblaney.co. etc

 

Jeremy wrote in

Yes please. The more data sources I have the better.

Although they may not be the most reliable source of data. The brochures
of this type of company obviously over-egg the problem of false
credential for commercial reasons. However, they may be willing to
release genuine data for an academic project.

 

don't see why not, as long as you know what you're going to write
about, it's fairly easy to write >1000 words per hour. Certainly
that's the sort of output I expected of myself when I used to write
magazine articles and tutorials - it's coming up with /what/ to write
is the tricky part, of course.

I see CVs all the time where it's clear that the person is at least
wildly exagerating a particular skill.

And I've interviewed people who've clearly lied on their CVs about the
level/depth of experience about a particular (technical) skill. The
most common one I've come across is exagerating the length of time
they've used a particular skill/tool.

 

Ben Blaney wrote in

Thanks.

It does not worry me. I'm inherently lazy so like to take my time with
these things. If I can do the data collection from my desk then all the
better.

I'll be in touch.

 

darsy wrote in

Thanks. I'll be in touch with some specific questions later in the year.

 

You see, this is where I fall down, as I tend to underestimate my abilities
in a skill - and be far too honest.

Agencies don't help here though - "you need 4 years of .Net experience" ...
ummmmmm

 

it's a balancing act, for sure.

yeah, I know. I was speaking to a friend of mine who works on the
C#.net team in Redmond, and even Microsoft are having some problems
finding people with decent .Net experience.

 

darsy wrote:

We decided not to use .NET and opt for J2EE simply because there were no
decent .NET people available. I was after people who knew both what to do,
and what *not* to do, which IMO comes from a few years' bitter experience.
Give it 18 months or so and you'll start to see those sorts of people with
..NET skills too.

 

You could always just bodge the whole thing together with Python or
something, you know.

*ding*. I've been interviewing quite a bit in the last couple of
weeks, and have been developing a few "pet questions" to ask people -
one of the best for getting bewildered looks is simply "what's the
biggest mistake you've made in the last 3 years". It's amazing the %
of people who've claimed never to have made a bad technology decision.

at least in theory, I'm going to start work on a c#.Net project here
within the next 9 months - at the same time as doing Java
certification and - bizarrely - becoming /less/ of a techie and more
of a manager.

 

darsy wrote in

Will you use velcro pointy hair so you can switch between roles?

 

heh - not really at "boss" level, but definitely becoming a "them"
rather than an "us".

 

Sadly, me too.

I'm having a baptism of fire, but seem to be winning, at the expense of
what was left of my soul.

 

Interesting theological point here - do ging-gers have souls?

 

who cares.

 

"That last wheelie in the Rickmansworth Hockey Club car park"

"It was a bad technology decision that led me to be working with the
technology I'm working with."

 

heh - that'd be a "good answer".

that's exactly the point.

 

We do.